


Psych, Season 6, Episode 3, This Episode Sucks

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s06e03 This Episode Sucks, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 06, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23329087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.
Kudos: 2





	Psych, Season 6, Episode 3, This Episode Sucks

I love this episode.

Open to Lassiter in a bar. At first, the bartender is sympathetic, but he manages to unnerve her with his talk of bodies turning up and maniacs with knives.

The episode’s special guest played by Kristy Swanson, Marlowe, appears in a vampish red dress. She orders what Lassiter’s having, and sitting down, she flirtatiously says, “I hope you weren’t saving this stool for someone else.”

“Do I know you, or do you think I’m someone else?” Ouch. And, heh.

She makes a toast to the night, and looking at her suspiciously, he nevertheless clinks his glass against hers. She justifies his suspicion by asking, “What’s your story, Carlton?”

He demands to know how she knows his name. Realising her mistake, she nevertheless responds she asked him a question, first.

Remembering the prostitute he thought was Juliet’s friend, he inquires, “Are you a prostitute?”

I can’t imagine how this line would come across to someone who doesn’t know the context.

Not knowing how to respond, she laughingly asks if this is the vibe she’s giving off. His face reveals he’s about to apologise, but before he can, she answers in the negative. They have a brief moment of connection over their respective loneliness.

One thing I like about this episode is, though still deriving humour from Lassiter, it does honestly explore some of his issues and, overall, treats him with remarkable sympathy.

Noting she already knows his name, he says he comes to the bar to unwind due to his tense job. Then, they have a geek-out about Clint Eastwood. This is adorable, but having no interest in the man, I’m not going to bother trying to recap. He babbles about his singleton status, briefly goes into his political beliefs, and then, ends with informing her he has an extremely high pain threshold. Heh.

Complimenting her necklace, he asks her about herself. She’s single and likes men with hair on their chest.

It’s worth pointing out Shawn may try to torment Lassiter, but if Lassiter would just listen, he’d find himself greatly benefiting from Shawn’s advice.

Complimenting his eyes, she asks why his job’s so intense.

Snapping himself out of it, Lassiter demands to know how she knows his name.

Placing her hand over his watch, she declares she needs to make a brief visit to the restroom.

There’s a time-jump, and the bartender is unsympathetic to his attempts at rationalising why the mystery woman hasn’t returned. Over at the ladies’ room, there’s line, and one woman is beating on the door. Going over, Lassiter flashes his badge as he squeezes in front. Managing to get the door opened, he finds the room empty with the window opened.

Elsewhere, a man walks through a parking lot with flickering lights. Unable to remotely unlock his car, he does so manually. Once inside, he realises he can’t start the car, either.

Showing bad judgement, he gets out.

If a person is uneasy whilst in the middle of a deserted parking lot during the night, even if the person doesn’t have a phone (which this character _does_ ), the best thing to do is lock the doors, try to get any rolled-down windows rolled up, and to stay. It’s better to spend an uncomfortable night in the car until people arrive in the morning than risk getting out. In his case, he should have locked the doors and used his phone to call someone.

After getting out, he’s attacked by a hooded figure.

Now, despite my rant, I don’t actually find this unrealistic.

There are no female victims in this episode. I think part of this is to keep Marlowe and another character who will be revealed later semi-sympathetic, but another part could be, consciously or not, the writers realised this scene likely wouldn’t work with a woman. Many women/girls do tons of things to try to avoid danger throughout their day, and within feminist communities, there’s a lot of encouragement for women/girls to recognise and respect their fear of certain things.

Yes, some women would get out of the car, but I think many would do what I wrote up above. This would mean either there’d be no plot, or Marlowe’s accomplice would have to break a terrified woman’s window and physically drag her out. As noted, this would dramatically decrease any sympathy the audience might have for the character and, by extension, Marlowe.

The next morning, at the crime scene, Juliet is annoyed Shawn and Gus followed her, despite her specifically telling the former not to. Lassiter and Buzz are talking, and Buzz is trying to do his job and report on the crime scene. However, Lassiter wants to know what Buzz found about the mystery woman. Buzz points out he’s going to need possibly a bit more information, and Lassiter thinks his description of her as blonde, pale, perfect, beautiful, and perfect is more than sufficient.

Yes, who needs height, weight, body shape, hair length and shade, and/or eye colour when blonde, pale, and able to make, at least, one man hot are given as descriptors?

Lassiter and Juliet examine the body. Shawn and Gus are convinced a vampire attacked the victim, and Lassiter finds a necklace matching Marlowe’s. The duo makes their big, dramatic announcement, and hating his life, Lassiter announces, “Actually, I’m going to have to go with Spencer on this one.”

Later, Gus is all dressed to fight vampires, and Shawn isn’t sure what to make of Lassiter agreeing with his theory. They go in to the morgue where Woody, Lassiter, and Juliet are waiting. Woody and Shawn have their usual bizarre method of communicating, and Woody gives Juliet a balloon shaped as the small intestine.

Ordering everyone to find the vampire the other three men are convinced exist, Lassiter excuses himself on the grounds of having a personal matter.

Juliet hates everyone and everything but especially her boyfriend and Lassiter.

Next, Lassiter goes into the pawnshop where a character played by Van Hansis from As the World Turns works.

Lassiter shows him the necklace, and Hansis’s character informs him they sold those three or four years ago, but, seeing as how the pawnshop mostly sells junk and isn’t part of a recognised chain, they don’t keep records of who buys what. He offers to buy Lassiter’s watch, and Lassiter remembers Marlowe putting her hand on it.

At a club where people are dressed as vampires, Juliet is lecturing Shawn on the phone. He and Gus to appear, and they look like complete idiots in their vampire costumes.

The three of them go up to the bar, and for anyone interested, Corey Feldman plays the bartender. I know little about him or Corey Haim, but I know many people were super excited about his appearance. He tells Juliet someone called asking if he’d sell actual human blood.

Meanwhile, Lassiter has found Marlowe’s house. I don’t know if this means she has a criminal record or not. Some states require finger or just thumbprints to be taken when a person gets/renews a driver’s license, and certain jobs require civilians to submit fingerprints. It’s never said how running her prints helped him find her.

He prepares his gun, knocks on the door, and then, quickly uses some breath spray. Heh. When she answers, he greets her as, “Marlowe Viccellio.” She asks how he found her, and he shows his badge.

This is minor, but she seems genuinely curious. This doesn’t completely fit in with later information. I’d’ve thought she and a certain other character would have done more research on him. It could be she knew he was a cop but didn’t expect him to actually track her down.

Inside, showing his own observant skills, he quickly realises Marlowe lives with someone else. She explains she lives with three male roommates.

The show doesn’t focus on the creepy aspects of this, but in real life, if a cop tracked a woman down and started interrogating her the way Lassiter just did, it wouldn’t be funny, it’d be scary. However, since this is a show, it is funny and sad on Lassiter’s part while Marlowe is just confused.

He demands to see her necklace.

In her bedroom, she has a neat line about him already being in said room, and behind her, Lassiter is uneasy. The scene is tense with him ready to draw his weapon. However, showing him the necklace, she asks what this is about.

He says he really needs to know what she did after she ditched him last night.

Marlowe gives a heartbreaking speech detailing how she sat in her car and watched him until he went home. She explains she felt a connection, and with how badly her life has been going lately, it scared her.

Swanson is excellent in this episode.

He babbles about his feelings, and awesomely, they put their palms up to touch them against each other. It’s a sweet, cute gesture, and it’ll get several callbacks later on.

Then, Juliet, Shawn, and Gus appear, and in a moment I don’t like, they enter Marlowe’s house before she even gets to the door.

Unfortunately, the scene continues to go downhill with Marlowe coming across as somewhat homophobic when she and Lassiter both make their opinions of Shawn and Gus’s ridiculous costumes known.

Yes, they look like idiots. Moreover, they _are_ idiots. Their costumes are ridiculous. However, there’s no need to bring sexuality or perception of sexuality into things.

It’s established they’re here about the murder, and I do like Marlowe’s reaction. Juliet brings up the human blood thing, and Marlowe blames it on one of her three roommates. She and Lassiter make it clear they’re all puppyish for one another, and Juliet asks about the roommates. Two of them have normal names, and one of them is Lucien.

“Where’s Lucien,” the trio inquires at the same time. Hee.

At the station, Lassiter is talking to Marlowe over the phone to gather information on any food allergies he needs to take into account when fixing her dinner. Aw. Juliet tries to talk to him about the suspect they have, but he waves her away in favour of continuing to flirt with Marlowe.

In the interrogation room, Lucien is played by Tom Lenk from BtVS/Angel.

Father Wesley gets a mention (yay!), Juliet has no patience for her boyfriend and his best friend, and Lucien claims he was at work during the murder. Juliet says she’ll need to check with his boss. He awesomely says, “Fine. His name is Wayne,” and makes it clear with five words he’s aware of the preconceptions his name often brings, and aside from mild annoyance, he just doesn’t even bother. In the process of all this, it’s revealed Shawn and Gus suck at a golf game designed for children.

Shawn, however, does his psychic shtick about Lucien having a cat, and it’s revealed Lucien actually sleeps in a tent outside the house.

I hope this is truly his choice, because, if not, Marlowe and her other roomies come across as major jerks.

A different roommate named Edward has the cat, and Shawn drags Gus and Juliet away.

Later, the trio arrives at a blood bank. They witnesses a cat going into an open door.

First, the blood bank has terrible security. Second, I don’t think it’s ever clarified whether the cat is the under the care of the robbers or if it’s just a tame cat that coincidentally happened to be around, but if it’s the former, what sort of person brings a cat along on a robbery?

They insist the cat is Edward. Juliet exasperatedly agrees to go check things out. “God, I used to be a detective. Now, I’m a babysitter.”

Inside, the cat is sitting on what’s intended to invoke the image of a pentagram but isn’t actually a pentagram. The cat wanders away, they follow, and then, hearing a dinging sound, they turn and see a caped figure running in super-speed. Also, bizarrely, it seems somewhat foggy where the figure runs.

They turn back around, and another cloaked figure runs past them.

Both times, instead of shouting, ‘Police!’, and giving chase, Juliet is more puzzled by the outfit and the fact the person is supposedly in two places at once. The obvious answer is there are two suspects.

There’s a crash, and they finally run. She still doesn’t identify herself as police.

They find glass broken and blood stolen but no person.

The other cops come. Buzz adorably bonds with the kitty, and Henry ignores his idiot kid and his idiot kid’s best friend in favour of Juliet. She admits she isn’t sure what she did see but is definitely not backing their claims of the cat being a disguised vampire.

They find one of Marlowe’s acrylic nails, and Shawn and Gus get worried for Lassiter when Juliet tells them about Lassiter inviting Marlowe over for dinner.

Instead of calling him, they rush off to save him.

For frell’s sake, media, the telephone has been around since the _1800s_.

Celluar/mobile phones have been a patented concept since _1917_. They started entering the public in certain countries during the 1970s, if not earlier. Since they 2010s, they’re so widespread many homeless people and prepubescent children have them.

Either acknowledge calling people is a thing but isn’t working for some reason (Juliet’s cell isn’t charged/got broken/just isn’t working, Lassiter has both Shawn and Gus blocked, and so, one of them is trying to get in contact with the station or Henry whilst they’re rushing over to the house), or create a universe where there isn’t widespread readily available instantaneous communication.

Over at his house, Marlowe arrives, and it’s empathised she doesn’t come in until he invites her. Inside, they start making out. The finger without the acrylic nail is visible, and as she starts kissing his neck, the camera freezes on her face.

The next scene has them still mostly clothed in bed, and outside, Gus and Shawn call for him. He yells for them to go away, and Juliet makes her presence known. This is followed by Henry and Buzz doing likewise. A completely frustrated Lassiter breaks away from Marlowe. She makes it clear she’d prefer just to ignore them so that they can get on with the sexytimes.

Opening the door, he yells at them about how he has less of a sex life than he’d like. Juliet hands him the evidence bag with the acrylic nail.

Inside, he and Marlowe sit as she’s questioned about the nail. She insists it’s just a coincidence. Juliet insists Marlowe will let them check her house, then. Believing Marlowe’s innocence, Lassiter more-or-less makes the decision for her, and Marlowe can’t object, because, she can’t bring herself to tell him what everyone but him knows.

At her house, Shawn quickly finds the stolen blood, and Marlowe confesses to the theft but begs Lassiter to believe she didn’t kill anyone. Handcuffing her, he asks Juliet not to bother him anymore with this particular case.

Both Swanson and Omundson do wonderfully in this scene and make each character sympathetic. Marlowe lied, but she does care for Lassiter and needs him to believe her. Lassiter cares just as much for her, but he can’t bring himself to due to the hurt she’s caused.

As they leave, Shawn is playing around with the blood baggie, and he squeezes it out.

Well, there’s one person who won’t get as much blood as they legitimately need. There’s one person whose service to humanity of sitting there with a needle in their arm has just been invalidated.

Gus freaks out over the blood.

In the living room, Gus is catatonic, and Henry tries to get him to respond. Shawn talks to Juliet on the phone. On TV in the background, there’s some black-and-white horror movie playing.

At the station, Buzz informs Juliet another victim has been attacked and is at the hospital.

Hearing this, Shawn happily says, “This means Lassie’s in love with a liar and a blood thief but not a full-on murderer.”

Gus recovers, and they go to the hospital. The patient gives the impression of having suffered from a lobotomy. Despite Shawn’s protests, Gus eats the patient’s food. The doctor comes in after Juliet leaves, and Shawn gets a look at the chart. The patient is O negative.

O blood types can donate to anyone, but they can only receive O blood. I don’t know if O blood being incredibly rare is true or not, but at least, the show didn’t use AB, the opposite of O blood. AB can take blood from anyone but can only donate to another AB.

Get it right, Queer as Folk (US) and other shows responsible for having an AB character in desperate need of a compatible blood donor.

Shawn has Gus fake a medical emergency so that Shawn can check the computer. A man named Adrian Viccellio is in need of O negative blood. Shawn and Gus shoo the doctor away, and they figure out Adrian has a rare blood disease requiring routine transfusions, but aside from O negative supposedly being so rare, there’s also the issue of him probably not having good insurance.

Juliet comes in, they explain, and she tells them Lassiter has O negative. Again, they don’t call or text, they just rush off to save him.

Meanwhile, since rushing out isn’t an option for her, Marlowe does settle for calling. Wearing this cool scarf on her head, she pleads with Lassiter not to hang up, and it’s mentioned she had to beg for this phone call.

Telling the officers at the station, ‘Look, it’s on you if something happens to Head Detective Lassiter, go check on him,’ wouldn’t work?

However, Lassiter is somewhat drunk. He babbles about his broken heart and how he regrets reacting badly to his mother entering a lesbian relationship. Insisting he’s in danger, Marlowe tries to get him to listen, but there’s a knock on the door, and despite her frantic instructions for him to not open it, he does so.

The visitor, Adrian, is the guy from the pawn shop, and he asks if someone is home before knocking Lassiter out.

When Lassiter regains consciousness, Adrian has him tied up and is getting ready to withdraw blood from him. Showing regret, he tries to be comforting, and urging Lassiter to go back to sleep, he promises it’ll be over soon.

In the car, the trio discuss things. There’s a flashback to Adrian and Marlowe robbing the bank, and Gus insists he’s not giving up on the cat=vampire theory until he sees the other roommate and said cat in the same room.

Meanwhile, Hansis does a great job in Adrian’s scene with Lassiter.

Adrian says he hung up on his “big sis” and that she was rather upset. He’s surprised Lassiter didn’t know about Marlowe and him being siblings, and he teases Lassiter about Marlowe being, “all sweet on you”. Aw.

Although, how did he think this conversation would have gone? ‘Well, my brother works at a pawn shop, and here’s a picture. Oh, you met him earlier? And asked him about my necklace? Uh, he’s so forgetful. No, he never had a necklace just like mine at the shop that he works at that once sold them. Wait, what do you mean, you want to talk to him about the murder?’

Then, of course, she just never tells him (Adrian).

Lassiter is all momentarily gooey about Marlowe liking him back. Calling him tough, Adrian gives his blessing to the couple. He reveals he hates the fact his sister is sacrificing so much for him, and he wants her to be with a man who will take proper care of her. Making it clear he never meant to kill anyone, he swears the pre-credits victim was alive when he left him.

I will point out, he could and should have called the police on the victim’s phone or, if there was one, a nearby payphone, but if he honestly thought the man wouldn’t die from what he did, this does still keep him sympathetic.

There’s a brief scene of the trio in the car.

Back at Lassiter’s, he tries to talk Adrian down. Adrian explains how the healthcare system is completely screwing him over, and in response, he’s just trying desperately to live.

The trio arrives to discover Lassiter has managed to subdue Adrian all by himself. Not believing him, Gus knocks himself out with chloroform.

The next day, Lassiter is trying and failing to write a letter. Juliet insists someone go talk to him. Shawn is chosen.

Lassiter, however, dismissively leaves with the letter he’s finally written.

He visits Marlowe, and they talk through the phone. Her brother’s going to get the care he needs in prison (unless he gets killed or otherwise dies), and she’s hopefully going to get a light sentence.

When she’s trying to apologise and express her feelings, he interrupts to ask her opinion about some Clint Eastwood movies. After she gives said opinion, he stands up, turns around, and then, turns back around to put the note against the glass.

_My Dear Marlowe,_

_I will wait for you these six to eighteen months. See you next Wednesday._

Aw. Also, I think, when this episode originally aired, new episodes aired on Wednesdays.

She puts her palm against the glass, and he does, too. Then, a beautiful smile forms on his face as the most perfect music plays, and the camera slowly pans up to reveal two figures standing in a circle of light before panning to the cosmos, showing the moon, and having fireworks go off.

In my opinion, this is the best ending of a Psych episode.

James Roday directed and co-wrote this episode, and I agree with the many who’ve said he often does an excellent job at giving his co-workers material to make them shine. This is one of my favourite Lassie episodes, and most of the guest stars were awesome.

Fin.


End file.
